PH Fleet: Jaguar XF Diesel S

The Jag continues to do the big stuff well but the details are starting to grate

It is hard to get any car manufacturer to accurately state the time and resources they invest on cabin design and the way we as humans interact with the increasing amounts of technology housed therein. In the future, it is a theme that might define the strength or weakness of a brand.

Big cat needs to leap a little further to keep pace

Viewed in these terms, Jaguar is on a rocky road just now. The XF Diesel S continues to be a fine car in many ways, but if your life with it is punctuated by spells with Audis, BMWs, Mercedes and even Volkswagens - as mine is - you quickly realise that its cabin electronics are well below par.

To make sure that it wasn't just me or a brain addled by too much German exec exposure, over the past few months I've lent the car to three people for a two-day period, and then pooled opinion from those who also run Jaguars or have spent prolonged periods of time in them. That's an important distinction- I think many people struggle to understand modern car cabins on brief acquaintance because a human being just has to give its brain enough time to at least understand the logic system behind them. Assuming that there is in fact a logic system (original 7 Series iDrive, take a bow).

Complex systems require simple controls

Put it to the floorEveryone I have spoken to agrees that the Jag cabin isn't just old, it's illogical. The former isn't a crime, but needs rectifying soon. The latter is a problem because the touch-screen solution is at the heart of the problem.

Having so many functions paves the way for the clean fascia design, but it also means that changing tune and then reducing the effects of the bum-warmers takes too much time, concentration and irritation. Why my iPhone won't play a song for more than 90 seconds when the Bluetooth connection with the car's telephone is live I will never be able to explain or rectify. It is supremely annoying.

I've touched on this before, so won't labour the point much further, but in every aspect of its electronic behavior - in each system supposed to stand out on the spec sheet or make occupants' lives a little easier - the Jag feels unfinished.

Charm and style the Jag can still do

Shoestring budgetSupporters with inside knowledge have sent me notes saying that the company did an amazing job with the XF and this facelift version with scant resources. Be that as it may, if you spend £50K on a saloon car, you expect the iPod thingy to work and the blindspot widget not to direct you into the path of fast moving vehicles. People don't extend sympathy for R&D budgets in the final reckoning.

This is a complicated relationship though, and it's soon to draw to a close. I defend criticism of the XF the way I do barbs aimed at family members - I can be rude as hell about it, but woe betide outsiders who try the same.

I love looking at it, I love the cabin's hearth-like glow at night, adore the ample performance and most of all I like the association of it and me. Funny thing that, but it's a key tenet of any car-human relationship. There are many cars I would love to drive, but just wouldn't feel comfortable doing so. The Jag works.

Simple stuff like this should just work

A thirst for lifeFuel consumption has leveled to the 31mpg mark, which I find pretty unspectacular. A few days spent in a Panamera Diesel driven at similar speeds saw it hit 41mpg.

As for the harsh ride on start-up, I now have clearance to ask some probing questions to the people in charge at Jaguar. Knowing how little the tyres heat up after 10 minutes driving I'm pretty much convinced it's the dampers that need to rouse from slumber, but it'll be interesting to find out. It's such a shame because for me, and I'm sure many people, the first part of a morning drive is the best - with clear, interesting roads. In all cars I've become accustomed to extracting maximum fun from minimal throttle as the engine warms. In the XF you can't rev it and the suspension is closed for business.

So there is much to recommend the XF Diesel S, but the reality is quite harsh: the car is ready for replacement. It is based on the S-Type and it has done a fine job representing Jaguar in a tough sector, but for all its charm, it is now feeling dated.

I largely agree with everything you have just written, if blue and me works fine in a £10k Fiat there are NO excuses at all at £50k.

A colleague of mine tried a 2.2 for a few days and the electronics / contols drove him mad and he picked a specced up 320 (the new one)instead.

A little sad really.

Krikkit27 Jun 2012

I agree on the touchscreen - it has that one inexcusable irritation which is lag. Every screen change takes far too long, every button press too long to register. It desperately needs a properly powered system, something along the lines of a Tegra 2 tablet gutted and placed in a dashboard would work very well indeed.

The iPod problem is easily solved - either plug it in or just use the bluetooth connection, it works perfectly well either/or, but a common bug among other hardware (not just the Jag's) is struggling connecting to a phone twice.

David8727 Jun 2012

The Range Rover Evoque I have use of has the same entertainment system and I agree that it's not the most intuitive to use. Yesterday I wanted to change to a specific radio station and I had to give up after the 30 seconds or so that I was stationary. Thst said, the blind spot monitoring thingie works excellently.

964Cup27 Jun 2012

Same problems with 2012 Disco 4. Very slow touchscreen responses; iPhone wired connection cuts out after a short while; very slow to fire up the reversing camera, too. All probably fixable with a decent software update.

JLR also failed to carry any stock of replacement screens for the Disco for months after launching the new model (which has an almost identical screen to the '11 model, but with the VIN window in a different place). Which was a bit of pain when we took a stone through our screen two weeks after taking delivery. It was six weeks before we got a replacement. Not a design fault, but another sign that things are not quite as they should be behind the scenes.

E38Ross27 Jun 2012

what a shame, the face lift looks absolutely fantastic but it's the inside you spend most of your time.